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June 1, 2012

The Vienna Gala Evening Dress: Finished!

The Vienna Gala Evening Dress is finally finished! Right in time, because next tuesday I'm going to pack it into my suitcase to take it with me to Vienna on wednesday.

Now some construction details:
Instead of an invisible zipper at the side seam, I put in a centered back zipper by hand. I don't like side zippers, and I often heard that invisible zippers tend to break more easily, so I thought this version would be better for me. And I think that it looks nice and not too conspicuous. Putting zippers in by hand is really much easier than putting them in by machine!

Here is a peek inside the dress. I underlined the whole dress with silk organza, but I lined only the bodice part, with self fabric. I also added a waist-stay, being careful to not make it too snug, since, like everybody knows, you can eat wonderful Schnitzel and Buchteln and Sachertorte in Vienna, and unfortunately, the gala evening will take place on the last day... you know what I mean?

To remove the bulge in the upper front skirt part was a problem. I started with distributing the gathers of the skirt only at the sides, but that resulted in stress wrinkles at the front. So I gathered the skirt evenly again, pinned out some of the excess fabric and stitched that as two darts, ending about one centimeter away from the waistline, which finally did the trick and is nearly invisible between the gathering.

But I couldn't solve the problem of the ties in the back which don't want to lie flat when they are knotted together, although I spent some time only adjusting the back ties (which takes even more time if you don't have anybody to help you with pinning them in your back!). But this is a flaw I can live with.

Altogether, I am really happy with how the dress came out! Although it's not perfect, it still fits better than any other store bought dress I could buy around here. And it has a nice slimming effect!
I'm gonna wear it with black evening gloves (unfortunately I could not find any longer gloves in Zurich), and with my vintage, beaded evening purse. Vienna, here I come!